


Distance

by nikomiel



Series: Volleyshots [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Coming Out, KageHina - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 20:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3424082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikomiel/pseuds/nikomiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Is there something going on between you two?"</p><p>A one-shot about how a simple answer can tear you apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distance

Hinata liked to touch people.

Kageyama knew this even before they were dating. It was obvious, how Hinata liked to sling one arm around Noya’s shoulders (he had to jump to get to Tanaka), or high-five Sugawara, or punch Asahi on the arm, very gently, or hide behind Kageyama, or tug on Kageyama’s shirt, or fist-bump Kageyama, or poke Kageyama in the stomach if he said he needed to pee..

He was just a very touchy person. They had that in common, although Kageyama’s touchiness was entirely metaphoric and mood-related.  
Kageyama didn’t tend to touch people at all, really, unless he was grabbing their head to shut them up. Which he only did to Hinata, because who else was stupid enough to piss him off like that?

It had gotten to the point where Kageyama was sure that if he were blind, he would still recognise Hinata by the lightness of his fingers and the slight roughness of his skin. He would recognise the painful spine-juddering jolt that he only got when Hinata was kissing him, the rush of blood to a very distinct area when only Hinata’s hands were rising under his shirt.

But that wasn’t to say that he was used to it.

And apparently his mother wasn’t used to it either, judging by the looks she was throwing Kageyama at the dinner table that evening.

Hinata was talking with his hands, as usual, throwing them around and miraculously not dropping any food off his fork, but still touching, always touching.  
Patting Kageyama on the back, grabbing his hands to illustrate a story, ruffling his hair (knowing full well Kageyama couldn’t grab his head in retaliation under his mother’s eagle eye).  
It was making Kageyama nervous.  
The air was way too hot, suddenly, it was stifling him and making him sweat buckets until he was sure that there must be droplets actually running off his arms onto the dinner table, and it was like everything slowed down as Hinata touched him again, lightly on the arm, and his mother narrowed her eyes, opened her mouth…

Then everything happened at once.

“I’m sorry, is there something going on between you two?”

Kageyama was yelling it across the table, yelling a “ _No_!” that completely drowned out Hinata’s noise of confusion, but unfortunately not his sharp intake of breath immediately afterward, and Kageyama was realising what just happened, how it must look to the tiny middle blocker sitting there with his hands now tightly clasped in his lap, who was suddenly standing up, excusing himself, and leaving.

He blinked, and Hinata was gone.  
His mother was staring at him, and he could see the disbelief and disapproval mingling in her dark eyes, but he could deal with that later.  
What he couldn’t deal with later was the fact that his boyfriend had just walked out on him after being told their relationship didn’t exist.

Gabbling a “Be right back, sorry,” to his mother, he dashed to the front door and wrenched it open.

It was raining. Of course it was raining.  
And Hinata was nowhere in sight.

 

At first the light drops reminded him a little of Hinata’s gentle touches, patting against his skin and trailing over his shoulders and neck. Then the heavens cracked open, and it began absolutely _pissing_ down, and any romantic notions about the weather were washed away with the gallons of rainwater gushing down the street.  
The roads all around him were dim with the reluctant amber of streetlights, battling half-heartedly against the heavy dark and the pouring rain. He could barely see at all, running through the rain with no idea what direction he was going or if he was heading the right way at all.  
He had to find Hinata. The idiot was going to get sick, or lost, or worse.

The worse stuck in his mind and refused to leave, and he felt his volleyball muscles kick into high gear as he sprinted forwards, dimly registering that he was heading towards Karasuno.

There was a park near the school, he realised with a jolt, where they used to practice, back before they used it for making out instead. The first time Hinata had touched him had been there, brushing hands when passing him the ball.

That was where it had all started. That was where Hinata would return.

Cutting through the bush, he breathed a ragged sigh of relief at the sight of a ginger-headed figure, huddled under a tree.

 "Idiot, don't run off like that, not when it's raining like-" The sentence trailed off as Hinata raised his head and Kageyama caught sight of his expression.

He looked devastated. Kageyama stayed where he was, totally at a loss for what to do, until Hinata spoke.

"I thought you would've told her by now."

A powerful wave of guilt rose in Kageyama's stomach as he realised that yes, he probably  _should_ have told her by now. 

So why hadn't he?

Hinata was standing up now, painfully rising to his feet as droplets fell through the dense undergrowth and hung themselves in his wild ginger curls. Bending his head, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. 

_Uh-oh._

“Well let me ask you something, Kageyama. Are you embarrassed to be dating a boy…” Hinata looked right at him, eyes hard and piercing. “Or are you embarrassed to be dating _me_?”  
Kageyama couldn’t think. This was all going so, so wrong. They were meant to be stealing kisses in his bedroom right now, toes curled against one another and stomachs pressed together.  
Not standing this far apart, where Hinata couldn’t touch him and obviously didn’t want to.

“I just wasn’t ready,” he managed eventually, meeting Hinata’s thorny gaze. “I’m still not ready. I just can’t, okay?”

“Tobio,” Hinata said flatly, and Kageyama knew that something bad was coming because Hinata _never_ used that name unless one of them was mightily pissed off, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stand feeling like you’re embarrassed of me anymore.”  
“No,” Kageyama said desperately, “it’s not that, there was never a good time-“  
“Oh, so her straight up _asking_ you wasn’t a good time?’  
“Not really, no! I didn’t-“  
“It’s been two months.” Hinata looked and sounded exhausted, and Kageyama wanted to tell him to come home, talk about it in the morning, but the look on Hinata’s face right now was killing him a little inside. He knew what was coming.  
“I’m sick of hiding out in your bedroom, of avoiding you at school and then kissing you in the gym. I know it’s too hard for you, but it’s too hard for me this way.”  
He took a breath, and Kageyama could feel the blow incoming. “I don’t like feeling like you’re embarrassed of me. So maybe I should just make it easier on you.”

  
As the rain slowed to a gentle patter, the distance between them seemed to stretch out like a vast canyon, so wide that Kageyama couldn’t see how he could bridge it anymore. Stepping forward, he tried.

“Shouyou, I’m really sorry, but it’s not my fault-“  
“I know.” Hinata’s face was turned away, and Kageyama could feel him slipping further out of reach. He felt tears prick in the corners of his eyes. “It’s not my fault, either. But neither of us can do this.”  
The next sentence hit Kageyama like a punch to the stomach.  
“So I think we should go back to being friends.”

There was a long and painful silence.

They stood there, wind whistling in the trees and biting through their wet clothing. Hinata was shivering, shaking with cold and tension, but Kageyama knew he would run away if he tried to step forward. The rain on his face was drying, but he felt wetness fill his eyelids.

“Don’t ask me to do that,” he choked out, vision blurring as the tears rose and spilled over. “I can’t go back to that, Shou, not after what we have-“  
“ _What do we have_?” Hinata’s voice was cold with anger, splitting through the eerie silence of the park. Kageyama bit his lip, trying to control himself as he continued. “When half of our relationship is lies, is it really a relationship at all? What do we have if one half pretends not to be with the other?”  
“That’s not fair,” Kageyama felt himself growing angry now, seething through the tears. “You know how hard it would be to be friends after this-“  
“Teammates then. Rivals, like we used to be.”

_Like we used to be._

Kageyama remembered, it, when they would race each other to school and fight over who got there first and annoy the living shit out of Daichi with their constant bickering, which even then was, according to Suga, ”fraught with the kind of sexual tension that made me want to kill you both”.  
The electric Karasuno rivalry that he’d lived for.  
Everyone had known what it would become.

Except this time, rivalry was all it could ever be.

Standing there, watching Hinata clutch his elbows and try to hold back tears, he wished it had stayed that way.  
This was too hard to lose.

He said the words aloud, watched Hinata’s tears gather on his cheekbones and spill down his chin, heard the sound of his boyfriend start to cry.  
It was the only sound that could break his heart.

But his heart was already broken, had shattered the moment Hinata stepped away from him.

Hinata wanted distance. He didn’t want to touch Kageyama anymore.  
He wanted space.

And Kageyama would give it to him.

 

He walked away.


End file.
